Acrid chartreuse
by This is My Truth Tell Me Yours
Summary: S.S. Always / In their 5th year, Severus and Lily would spend their evenings hiding away in the castle to try and boil complex potions. The thing is, they can't understand the instructions and sometimes, Lily just wants to have fun. One shot, short and sweet.


**Disclaimer:** The ideas are mine, the characters belong to J.K. If Lily and Severus had been mine I would have given them a happy ending.

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 _ **Prompts:** acrid, chartreuse_

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"Does this look _acrid_ to you?" Severus asked, pointing his wand at the fire under his cauldron and watching as the bubbles formed on the surface of the boiling liquid.

"A potion can't _look_ acrid, Sev!" Lily said, petulantly, "it can _taste_ acrid, it can even _smell_ acrid, but it's can't look-"

"Fine! So I don't know one word!" Severus interrupted her, picking up his book and scratching the word acrid from the page, "what does it even mean?"

" _Acrid_ means… pungent," Lily answered, after thinking for a second or two.

"Pungent?" Severus face was just as puzzled as before, "and what does that mean? Is it difficult word day?"

Lily started to laugh.

"You're doing that on purpose!" Severus said, realization suddenly coming to his face, "you're trying to wind me up!"

"I'm not trying, Sev, I'm succeeding," she said cheerfully, throwing a cushion at the boy.

"Fine," Severus said crankily, deflecting the cushion with a spell. Then he pointed his wand at Lily's backpack and summoning a large book that flew straight to his hands. Still laughing, Lily took over stirring the potion while Severus looked up the word acrid in her dictionary.

The two of them were inside an empty classroom in the 5th floor. They had gotten advanced potion books over the summer and ever since their fifth year started Lily and Severus had spent several evenings hiding away in empty classrooms, boiling those complicated potions and trying to get them right. Mrs Norris had sneaked up on them a couple of times, already, but they had had fun running through secret passageways and shortcuts to avoid being caught out of the common rooms after curfew.

"Bitter. Acid," Severus read out loud, "what now, is it supposed to be bitter or acid? See why I don't like this book? The author is too preoccupied showing off with difficult words than giving proper instructions!"

"You're not thinking of tasting the potion, are you?"

Severus obviously had been thinking exactly that.

"No,..." he said reticently, "it's not finished yet. But I think it needs more Sopophorous' beans juice! That's the only _acrid_ ingredient..."

"But we've already added the juice of three of those beans, like the book said,-" Lily started, picking up her own book again.

"Hmm," Severus thought for a moment, "cutting those beans was really difficult. Perhaps if we tried something else we could get a little more juice?"

"Like what?"

" _Diffindo!_ " he pointed his wand at another of those beans. Nothing extraordinary happened. The fruit was sliced in two and a negligible amount of juice was released.

They looked disapointed for a moment. The Lily pulled her wand.

" _Cofringo!_ " she said, without much thought.

The little bean exploded this time, along with the cutting board, and a large amount of juice splashed their faces.

"Lily!"

"Sorry," she said, licking a little bit of juice on her lower lip, "eew, you were right, this is acid."

Severus wiped the liquid from his eyes with the back of his hands.

"And there was a lot of juice in there… Maybe if we crushed it... Blowing it up can't be the only way..." he said, mumbling to himself. The boy picked up his silver dagger and used it to crush the magic bean. Then he squeezed the juice over the cauldron and the potion changed colours.

"There! We did it!" Severus celebrated, writing down _crushing the beans with the side of the silver_ _dagger works here as well,_ on the margins of the page

"I don't know… This doesn't look right-" Lily said, sliding her finger over the page of her copy of _Advanced Potion-Making_ and looking back at the boiling liquid.

"Why not? It's green just like the book says it's supposed to-"

"The book doesn't say green, Sev! It says _chartreuse._ "

"It's the same thing!" Sev insisted.

"It's not the same thing! If it were the same thing the book would have said green."

"I thought we had just agreed the book likes to show off with fancy words."

"But chartreuse isn't even green! And it is not even that fancy of a word!"

"What?" Severus asked, incredulously, "what was the last time you took a stroll around the edge of the forbidden forest and someone said 'oh look at that chartreuse tree, it's lovely!'"

"That's because trees are not chartreuse, they're green!"

"Chartreuse is green!"

" _Colori_ ,"Lily said, impatiently, pointing straight at Severus chest.

"What did you-?" Severus asked, looking down at his robes only to find that his tie had changed colours, "Lily, what did you do?"

" _That's c_ hartreuse," the girl said finally, indicating the bright green stripes on Severus' tie with a smile of satisfaction on her lips.

"Change it back!" Severus said, immediately. His tie was as bright as the neon signs he'd seen in London, "I look like a glow-in-the-dark fanged frisbee!"

"But Slytherin's colour _is green,_ Sev," Lily teased him, "and like you said, _chartreuse is green_."

"I can't walk around looking like this! I look ridiculous!" Severus said, exasperatedly, "Change it back!"

Lily laughed.

"Okay, chartreuse is a colour! Happy now?"

"No! You missed your chance! If you want me to change it back now you'll have to catch me!"

"Catch-? Lily wait!" Severus yelled, running after her, "wait!"

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 **Author's Notes:** I wrote this piece for:

 _1) OTP Boot Camp (Prompt 1: acrid) [I know... I haven't given up on starting and finishing boot camps even if they're not all that fashionable anymore]_

 _2)_ _The Weird Prompt Strikes Back! [Daily Competition] (chartreuse)_

 _3)_ **G** reek Mythology Mega Challenge: Athena (an intelligent muggle born who isn't Hermione Granger)

 _3) Ultimate Battle Competition! (_ Matching Accessory pack) - It actually started as something for the single accessory, but I always end up writing too much

Read and review, please... Severus&Lily are my OTP, I was aiming for sweet and cute here.


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